Some of the accounts I've seen suggest Padilla converted to Islam while he was incarcerated, or maybe shortly after. Your conversion to Islam came while you were detained in the California Youth Authority. Do you see any parallels between yourself and Padilla?

Not really.

Do you see parallels between yourself and John Walker Lindh?

To a certain extent. Just the simple fact that we both accepted Islam. The media isn't talking about it, but from reading between the lines I can see he first got involved with the Tabliq -- the pacifist movement.

Was that in California?

Yes, it seems that way. Because they've interviewed people that knew him, his friends at the mosque, and they're obviously Tabliq by appearance and by speech. So he got involved with Tabliq and he probably came to a point like I did, that, 'OK, I'm ready to defend my religion.' And he probably got the same thing from Tabliq that I did -- that there is no jihad in Islam. So he progressed on from there. I believe from there he went to Yemen to learn Arabic, and then from there he went to Pakistan. And I think from there it's simple: In Pakistan, he probably had an opportunity to go up and do what in his mind he thought was jihad, which was the Taliban fighting against the Northern Alliance. That's where this whole traitor thing really confuses me. Because he thought that he was going to Pakistan to help the Taliban fight the Northern Alliance to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan, which I can understand. The Northern Alliance are very bad people, even the U.S. [government] admits that now. They're criminals, the drug dealers, the warlords, and the Taliban was created to counter them.

What was your reaction to Lindh's guilty plea?

I agree with it. I don't know what he did do and what he didn't do, but if he believed that fighting for the Taliban was right, and all that stuff, then naturally you should plead guilty to it. If you did it, stand up and say: 'I did it.' I don't think that -- personally, I think that a lot of the charges against him are pretty outrageous and I think that if he did fight it, they would've had a hard time finding him guilty of anything, just for lack of evidence. But as a principle, I think pleading guilty is the right thing.

Lindh faces the possibility now of 20 years in prison, possibly a bit less. Is that punishment too harsh for what he did?

You've got to figure out, what did he really do? As far as I can tell, he joined up with the Taliban and it seems that his intention was to fight for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance to establish an Islamic state. What happened after September, and whatever the ties there, that's to the side. Just the idea of supporting the Taliban in their fight against the Northern Alliance, I mean, I myself had considered many times over the years starting back in '95 and '96, traveling to Afghanistan just to see what they were about. Because if they were truly fighting to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan, as an idea, that's something I would support. Now of course Sept. 11 and harboring Osama and all that, that changes everything. But initially when he went there obviously it was before September and I just don't know if I find anything wrong with the idea. Now if he had actually sat down with bin Laden and said: 'I can help you do this or that to kill some Americans,' then obviously he needs to be punished for that. No doubt. But I don't know if he ever did that. I'm trying to say that if the only thing he's really guilty of is fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, I don't think that's even punishable.

You trained in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan in 1993. What kept you from going to Afghanistan after the Taliban took over to see what the movement was all about?

If I would've gone, it would've been just that, to satisfy my personal curiosity. Because I had heard a lot of stories, for and against the Taliban, from people who had been there. Some people were Muslim, some people weren't. Even from Muslims there was some question about what was the Taliban all about. Were they doing things correctly, Islamically? If I would've gone, it would've been just to see with my own eyes. But I never wanted to go there to get involved with any conflicts, like between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, for the simple fact that it's too murky. Why would you go to Afghanistan and get involved in an internal conflict where you may be killing other Muslims?

Let's talk about your conversion to Islam. Can you describe your mind-set and the circumstances that led to your decision?

Well at that time, I mean, I didn't have any religion per se. I'm sure my family considered themselves Christian but we weren't raised any certain way. I was incarcerated almost two years before accepting Islam. And before those two years I really didn't like the idea of people who find religion while behind bars. I figured that if you were behaving a certain way before you came to jail, why change it now? Now you're going to find religion? That's just too convenient. But you know, one day I found an open Quran and I started reading it and it appealed to me. I studied briefly just for two weeks and I just decided that it made sense. And so I became Muslim.

Did you make the conversion with the idea at the time that you wanted to fight in jihad?

No, because like I said, the Muslims in prison, the imams who teach there and whatnot, not only are they against the jihad, but they probably try to keep any information related to jihad away from the people converting. Which is easy, because if you're in prison, it's not like you have access to a lot of materials. It wasn't in my mind at that time. I just saw Islam as something that would be good in my life, which it turned out to be. It was later when I got out that I started directing my attention to the war in Bosnia. And even then it wasn't like there was a group of Muslims trying to recruit me. Like I say in the book, I ran up against opposition when I finally decided I'd like to go and help Bosnia. The Tabliq informed me that this wasn't an option.

When you look at your own motivations for wanting to fight in jihad, what were they? What was the attraction for you?

At the time, back in '93 when I got out of CYA, it was basically Bosnia -- the height of the war was going on, Muslims were being slaughtered by the tens of thousands, literally, tens of thousands of women were being raped, and it wasn't just so much a religious thing, but a human thing -- that, you know, here these people are, being slaughtered, and the world isn't doing a whole lot to help them. And of course by the fact that they were Muslim, I had a little more interest in the subject. Sure, there were plenty of conflicts going on at the time, but this one, my attention was drawn to it. I just wanted to go and help these people. That's what jihad, the true jihad, is about. It's about defending people who are being attacked.

Recent Stories